Tech watchdogs fume as Google adtech monopoly left – Business News
Tech watchdogs cried foul this week after a federal choose unsealed a ruling that left Google’s digital promoting monopoly largely untouched – with one group blasting the remedies as an “embarrassing capitulation” that gained’t help information publishers and advertisers.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema’s 106-page determination ordered Google to share more information about its advert auctions with publishers and appoint an impartial antitrust monitor to police its business practices, amongst different modifications.
The order was unsealed roughly two weeks after Brinkema stated she wouldn’t order a compelled breakup of Google’s advert empire.
The Google brand is displayed during a press convention in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025. REUTERS
Google can be required to use the court-ordered modifications for simply six years – far much less than the 15-year time period sought by the Justice Department.
CEO Sundar Pichai’s company additionally retains control of its “AdX” market, the place it extracted a 20% charge to conduct online advert gross sales in actual time.
“After finding Google guilty of illegal conduct, this decision is an embarrassing capitulation that essentially lets them determine their own punishment in exchange for a promise not to repeat the behavior,” stated Barry Lynn, director of the Open Markets Institute. “Judge Brinkema’s decision fails the American people and American democracy.”
Brinkema’s light-touch strategy got here as a shock to many industry specialists after she ruled in April 2025 that Google’s conduct “substantially harmed” publishers and constituted an unlawful monopoly.
She additionally stated the company had “destroyed” key proof by deleting worker chat logs.
In her order, Brinkema asserted that her remedies “will be sufficient to effectively pry open to competition the ad tech markets that were injured by Google’s unlawful conduct, and prevent Google from reverting to anticompetitive conduct in these markets.”
Meanwhile, the choose stated that the DOJ’s push for a compelled divestiture was “neither realistic nor needed” to handle Google’s unlawful conduct.
Brinkema’s ruling marked the second time in as a few years in about one 12 months that Google averted a breakup its online empire regardless of a federal choose’s ruling that it was illegally dominating a particular market.
US District Judge Leonie Brinkema is pictured. Ballotpedia
In a separate case that concluded final September, US District Judge Amit Mehta determined towards the DOJ’s request to drive Google to sell off its Chrome web browser, regardless of earlier ruling that Google had a monopoly over online search.
“There is nothing in either set of Google antitrust remedies that materially changes $ things for the news media (harmed by Google),” Jason Kint, the CEO of online media commerce group Digital Content Next, wrote on X. “Google meanwhile is free to leverage its unbridled data harvesting across its services and our lives.”
Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s affiliate lawyer normal Stanley Woodward stated Brinkema’s ruling “marks a significant victory for this Department’s efforts to protect and restore competition.”
“We will continue to review the opinion to consider the Department’s options,” Woodward stated.
Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s international head of regulatory affairs, stated the company was “very pleased the court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow.”
With Post wires
